It is a common occurrence to sit on a chair or at a table, desk or the like, and experience an instability due to the uneven floor surface or differential lengths of the legs, that causes tilting or wobbling. Furniture is often “leveled” with various objects, including leveling screws, folded paper, cardboard and other miscellaneous items on hand. Although such items can provide relief in the short term, they are often unsightly and undesirable or are easily dislodged.
Chairs, desks, tables and other similar furniture that are subjected to extensive use are often fabricated with glides secured to the free ends of the furniture base to help distribute the weight or load over a larger “footprint” on the floor. Often, such glides have an adjustable overall length for “leveling” the furniture, for example, by manually rotating a threaded base portion of the glide relative to a threaded socket portion. However, such manual action for adjusting glide height can involve considerable effort, especially where a multiplicity of legs require frequent adjustment.
For seated furniture items, inadequate leveling can result in discomfort or even injury to a user. Of equal concern is the need to avoid damage or abrasion to the support surfaces on which legged structures are placed. For furniture used indoors this support surface is typically carpeting, wooden floors or tiled floors. For outdoor items such as patio furniture the support surface may be concrete, brick, tile, decking and the like.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,290,742 to Cox et al., the subject matter of which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety, describes a furniture glide that includes a cam mechanism that limits the rotatability of an upper cover with respect to a central mounting bolt to provide for hand turning of the support onto/off of a piece of furniture.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,234,199 to Bushey, the subject matter of which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety, describes a furniture glide that may be mounted on the terminal end of a furniture leg having an outer surface and including a sleeve that extends from the base and defines a cavity for receiving the furniture leg therein. However, this device is simply mounted over the furniture leg and is not otherwise secured.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,042,765 to Widerstrom, the subject matter of which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety, describes a self-adjusting shim device having an elastic outer bladder formed of a resilient material filled with a bouncing putty that will deform slowly under force like a highly viscous liquid but will resist rapidly applied loads as if it were a solid. The elastic outer bladder is disposed within a pair of opposed rigid cup-shaped members that are telescopically joined together. However, the rubber bladder may fail, resulting in leaking of the bouncing putty and thus failure of the shim device.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,042,764 to Carpinella et al., the subject matter of which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety, describes a self-leveling furniture glide comprising a cup-like urethane cushion located between a rivet and a base for transferring chair load resiliently and that can be independently adjusted to level the piece of furniture.
U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2008/0148522 to Beshon, the subject matter of which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety, describes a glide device that includes a housing, a unitary body and a resilient member positioned between the housing and the unitary body. The glide device is adapted to stabilize a legged object on a support surface while preventing damage to either the legged object or the support surface. However, there is no suggestion that glide device is self-adjusting to allow for leveling of the legged object.
Thus, it can be seen that while various self-leveling furniture glides have been developed, there remains a mains a need in the art for an improved self-adjusting furniture glide that overcomes the deficiencies of the prior art. In addition, there remains a need in the art for a self-adjusting furniture glide that is simple in construction, economical to manufacture and that is rugged and reliable in use.